1.2.13-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 1.2.13 Little Gervais Valjean hadn’t eaten anything all day? I can’t believe that the bishop would just let him go without feeding him. Did he run out of the bishop’s house when his back was turned or something? This is the first mention of the frightful calm the galleys had given him but when he’s not seized by sudden emotion we’ve seen quite a bit of it. I’m now suddenly curious as to how Valjean managed to be sent off to the galleys in April, arrive there less than a month later, and get released in October nineteen years later. That does not seem to add up. His sentence was nineteen years total not nineteen years and five months! Valjean goes on to break my heart by being pained by childhood memories he hasn’t thought of in forever which more than likely were not very pleasant and involved his sister. Little Gervais reminds me of Gavroche. I feel like Gavroche would have just stayed there and kicked Valjean’s leg or something until Valjean either attacked him or gave him the money back, though. I would have preferred a little more specifics about Valjean’s inner angst but that’s probably just modern preferences. At least Valjean didn’t take ALL of Little Gervais’ money even though he probably took most of it. And Little Gervais is actually respectful to him! No wonder he gets robbed. People are fine being awful to Valjean but dare to be civil and watch your back. I wonder why Valjean bothered to ask his name. I don’t feel like Valjean had really noticed at this time he stole the silver but later he remembered everything, even the kid’s name. The name he actually told this frightful man. Does not eating all day really make you feverish or was there something else? It’s not surprising that Valjean only started to focus on him when he started crying, a child crying. And perhaps he remembers nothing before that since he asked who was there and then later said it was him again and Gervais did identify himself again. If the priest hadn’t seen a child pass, what is the point of Valjean asking if he had seen a child by a certain name? Is he expecting “Oh, I thought you meant a child NOT named Little Gervais.” It’s a good thing Valjean has all that stolen silver since he’s giving away twenty francs just like that. Giving is like a compulsion with him, isn’t it? He gets over the compulsive stealing and starts compulsively giving. And then he just offers to be arrested and declares himself a thief after looking for a kid named Little Gervais? He is giving people all the information they need if they ever manage to find him one day and seek to press charges. I wonder if this guy who Valjean freaks out with his charity then wild confessions is the same guy who wouldn’t visit the dying convict in prison. Running until he collapsed with no food in him all day and weeping for the first time in nineteen years! And weeping for hours! And he’s all alone, too. I just can’t. And earlier he was so pained and bewildered he’d almost rather have been back in Toulon forever after less than a week out! I disagree with the notion that pride is the fortress of evil within us. It CAN be but it’s not always a bad thing nor is it the only thing. And I can’t see Valjean having any sort of pride at all at this point. I also disagree with the idea that he had to become a saint or else a monster. Maybe if he just went out and became a normal guy living a normal decent life he would be worse than other normal guys doing the same thing because of the bishop’s forgiveness but a monster is a bit much. Maybe he had to be better than other people to be considered as good as them (he certainly seems to think so) but it just seems like an exaggeration here. I know, I know, it represents divine mercy. I still think it’s a false dichotomy. “he sobbed with more weakness than a woman,” Thank you for that, Hugo. No one ever heard from him ever again in the next 1100 pages? Sure. And since he’s camped out outside the bishop’s house anyway and we’re about to timeskip to 1817, I really hope the bishop let him stay again. It should be safe, even without the redemption, since there’s no longer anything to steal. Commentary Pilferingapples Valjean hadn’t eaten anything all day? I can’t believe that the bishop would just let him go without feeding him. Did he run out of the bishop’s house when his back was turned or something? This is the first mention of the frightful calm the galleys had given him but when he’s not seized by sudden emotion we’ve seen quite a bit of it. I’m now suddenly curious as to how Valjean managed to be sent off to the galleys in April, arrive there less than a month later, and get released in October nineteen years later. That does not seem to add up. His sentence was nineteen years total not nineteen years and five months! Could those extra months have been time he was waiting for a trial, or some such?<:/ Valjean goes on to break my heart by being pained by childhood memories he hasn’t thought of in forever which more than likely were not very pleasant and involved his sister. Little Gervais reminds me of Gavroche. I feel like Gavroche would have just stayed there and kicked Valjean’s leg or something until Valjean either attacked him or gave him the money back, though. I would have preferred a little more specifics about Valjean’s inner angst but that’s probably just modern preferences. At least Valjean didn’t take ALL of Little Gervais’ money even though he probably took most of it. I remember a conversation floating around at one point about how 40 sous is A LOT of money for a kid at Gervais’ level— like, probably several days of meals at least.And Gervais isn’t exactly placed to get a steady income. Valjean may have done enormous harm to the boy here. And Little Gervais is actually respectful to him! No wonder he gets robbed. People are fine being awful to Valjean but dare to be civil and watch your back. I wonder why Valjean bothered to ask his name. I don’t feel like Valjean had really noticed at this time he stole the silver but later he remembered everything, even the kid’s name. The name he actually told this frightful man. Does not eating all day really make you feverish or was there something else? It’s not surprising that Valjean only started to focus on him when he started crying, a child crying. And perhaps he remembers nothing before that since he asked who was there and then later said it was him again and Gervais did identify himself again. Not eating all day + walking all day +massive emotional strain from thinking you’re going back to prison and/or having your SOUL PURCHASED will indeed mess with a person’s sense of reality. Blood sugar counts, kids! :P 19 years in prison doesn’t help. Valjean didn’t exactly get rehabilitative training on the way out. If the priest hadn’t seen a child pass, what is the point of Valjean asking if he had seen a child by a certain name? Is he expecting “Oh, I thought you meant a child NOT named Little Gervais.” It’s a good thing Valjean has all that stolen silver since he’s giving away twenty francs just like that. Giving is like a compulsion with him, isn’t it? He gets over the compulsive stealing and starts compulsively giving. And then he just offers to be arrested and declares himself a thief after looking for a kid named Little Gervais? He is giving people all the information they need if they ever manage to find him one day and seek to press charges. I wonder if this guy who Valjean freaks out with his charity then wild confessions is the same guy who wouldn’t visit the dying convict in prison. ooh, there’s a connection I hadn’t considered! And I like your point about the compulsive giving. Valjean at this point in life is still not really considering his actions at all, is he? Running until he collapsed with no food in him all day and weeping for the first time in nineteen years! And weeping for hours! And he’s all alone, too. I just can’t. And earlier he was so pained and bewildered he’d almost rather have been back in Toulon forever after less than a week out! I disagree with the notion that pride is the fortress of evil within us. It CAN be but it’s not always a bad thing nor is it the only thing. And I can’t see Valjean having any sort of pride at all at this point. I also disagree with the idea that he had to become a saint or else a monster. Maybe if he just went out and became a normal guy living a normal decent life he would be worse than other normal guys doing the same thing because of the bishop’s forgiveness but a monster is a bit much. Maybe he had to be better than other people to be considered as good as them (he certainly seems to think so) but it just seems like an exaggeration here. I know, I know, it represents divine mercy. I still think it’s a false dichotomy. Yeah, I think pride’s definitely one of those sliding-scale problems- like Lore Sjoberg said, “Do I go to hell for saying “this is a pretty good three-bean salad”, or do I have to get into the realms of hubris: “this is a better three-bean salad than GOD could make?” That said, look at the metaphor Hugo’s using- pride’s the FORTRESS of evil. Not that pride is evil in itself, but that pride is where evil goes to hide itself from assault. This…this I can almost get behind. Pride can, after all, be the last excuse for not learning, or refusing to change. There’s a reason it’s a big player in so many classic tragedies (maybe all of them?) “he sobbed with more weakness than a woman,” Thank you for that, Hugo. No one ever heard from him ever again in the next 1100 pages? Sure. And since he’s camped out outside the bishop’s house anyway and we’re about to timeskip to 1817, I really hope the bishop let him stay again. It should be safe, even without the redemption, since there’s no longer anything to steal. Urgh, yeah, that line. FMA has it as “more powerless than a woman” which I find a more interesting construction. Women being denied any power is kind of a Thing in this story, and tears might be seen as an attempted form of woman-appropriate action—like, maybe a crying woman could hope to change minds with her tears, but Valjean can’t even do that? But Wilbour’s got it as “weakness” and Denny as “with more than a woman’s abandon”. Interesting, that, since the women we’ve seen so far clearly don’t feel free to ‘abandon’ themselves to their emotions. French-fluent Brick!ers, any light to shed here? And I gotta say— in ANY OTHER BOOK, the whole “welp guess we’ll never here from this guy we’ve spent several chapters meeting” thing would be so nonsensical, but as it is, here we are waving The Bishop and Magloire and Baptistine goodbye. So if we didn’t all know the story, maybe Hugo’s constant “COULD THIS MAN BE JEAN VALJEAN” would seem a little more plausible? Notquitelostnotquitefound (reply to Pilferingapples) (I’m not fluent, but) The French is “Il pleura à chaudes larmes, il pleura à sanglots, avec plus de faiblesse qu’une femme, avec plus d’effroi qu’un enfant.” So “weakness” is the most direct translation, sadly! Caramarthenfan (reply to Pilferingapples) Not fluent, but the word is faiblesse, which does seem to usually be translated as ‘weakness’, but apparently can also be ‘impotence’. What Hugo meant, I can only speculate, but I think Denny’s making shit up. Sarah1281 (reply to Pilferingapples) I’m not sure if the extra months could have been while he was waiting for a trial. We know he was probably arrested in December and then on April 22nd he was put on a chain gang and set off for Toulon. He needed time to have a trial, of course, and it’s unlikely that they had great chain gangs put together very often as it would presumably take awhile to collect that many men sentenced to Toulon. We know it took 27 days after that to get to Toulon. Even if there was some delay between his getting recaptured and his getting sentenced to more years in Toulon, that shouldn’t matter because the extra time is added to the end of his sentence and his sentence should still be being served. It just does not make sense to me that he, arriving at Toulon on May 19th, was released on the eleventh or twelfth of October nineteen years later. He should really have been released in May. Perhaps, in addition to setting him back significantly financially, Valjean’s act of stealing from Gervais was what finally broke his spirit and/or turned him to hatred. I hope he ended up in Digne at some point and met the bishop! In addition to all of Valjean’s confusion and distraction, I think this and the earlier chapter about how he was just so upset he forgot his hunger and exhaustion show that after nineteen years Valjean really has no idea how to take care of himself either. Before he ate when he was fed and slept when they chained him to the plank and now that he’s responsible for doing it himself he often just doesn’t. He has difficulty finding food and shelter, yes, but his basic needs seem to so easily slip his mind. That is a good point that after far more pages on the bishop than Valjean and then skipping straight to Fantine we have no reason to believe that Valjean is our main character (or at least our tying the story together character).